


In Visions of Home Keeping

by FireEye



Category: Watership Down - Richard Adams
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 03:32:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16421591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireEye/pseuds/FireEye
Summary: Blackavar tries to find a warren that's as much a part of him as Efrafa, but where he's never been before.





	In Visions of Home Keeping

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gonergone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gonergone/gifts).



“Why would you want to go there?”

Blackavar patted the soft, dry dirt between his paws restlessly.

“It was my mother’s warren,” Blackavar told him.  “That makes it _my_ warren too.”

Coltsfoot hunched up.  Whatever his memories of Nutley Copse, they were merely that: _memories_.  But he had been there.  And that was more than Blackavar had.

“I don’t remember the way.”

Blackavar left him in his burrow, and wandered aboveground.  His gaze was drawn to Frith, low in the sky, at the edge of the world.

It was evening silflay.  A kit wandered from his mother’s side, peering up at him.  Blackavar stared back at him, Efrafa and Watership Down.

Vlevlain and Efrafa.  Vlevlain and Watership Down.

Efrafa and Nutley Copse and, now, Watership Down.

“Where are you going?” the kit stared at him.  “Not back to Efrafra?”

“No.  Somewhere else.  Another warren... but... it’s not there anymore.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” Blackavar admitted.  He didn’t know why he wanted to see it, now.  Now that he was free of Efrafa, and life was peaceful and quiet and what a rabbit’s life was meant to be.  The kit stared at him a few moments longer, then wandered back to its mother.

Blackavar started off, heading into the copse.  From there, he wandered onward – not really knowing where he was going, or how to get there, or even why.  By the time the sun had fully set, he simply knew he was going.

 

It was long after dark before he stopped for a rest.  It was fu Inlé, when a rustling startled him out of the dark.  Coltsfoot, continuing on while he had lingered, had caught up with him.  It wasn’t until Frith returned that the older buck spoke.

“I knew your mother, you know.  She was taken to another mark, but... _before_.  Before everything.  I remember her, sometimes.”

They traveled together silently for a time, through morning.  Into darkness again.  At times they stopped, resting under the cover of the brush, when it could be found.

“I’ll have to go back to Efrafa,” Coltsfoot said, “to remember the way.”

“Campion’s chief rabbit now,” Blackavar reminded him.  “He won’t mind.”

***

The journey was an adventure, but an uneventful one.

But Nutley Copse was not entirely as Coltsfoot had left it.  He was reluctant to approach the empty warren at all, but as they drew near under Frith’s watchful eye, a stranger wandered out to greet them.

“Have you traveled far?” he asked, oblivious to their dumbfounded shock.  “The warren isn’t far, if you’d like to rest.”

There were rabbits living there, comfortably as there ever had been.

***

It was evening again, Frith having just left the sky, and rabbits were feeding in the grass.  It felt right, but Blackavar still felt restless.

“We need to go back, I think,” he said.  “If nothing else, Hazel should know they’re here.  And Campion, and Groundsel.”

“You still think like an Efrafan,” Coltsfoot told him.  Blackavar fidgeted, but he added, “That’s not always a bad thing.”

They were silent for a time.  Eventually, Coltsfoot stretched out comfortably.

“I think I’ll stay here for a while,” he said.  “I’ll go back, if you return again.  But I’d like to know them, here.  I would like to hear their story.”

Blackavar pressed his nose against the older buck’s shoulder, and started off.  His grazing took further out from the warren; before long, he was headed back the way they had come.

**Author's Note:**

> Here, please enjoy a small Blackavar story.


End file.
